All Manner of Thing
by AnOtterShambles
Summary: My first fic! Based on deliabusbys' headcanon about Delia helping Sister Julienne with the flowers. Enjoy!


All Manner of Thing

"Delia?"  
Patsy's rich, clear voice rang through the sun-filled corridors of Nonnatus House. Usually she would not dare call for Delia so openly, but she knew that Barbara and Trixie were on house calls, Phyllis and Sister Evangelina were on the district rounds, and Sisters Mary Cynthia and Winifred, who as nuns were not supposed to spend time in idleness, were attending their devotions and other worthy pastimes. Only Sister Julienne was unaccounted for, and Patsy was quite certain she would be in her office, as her work as head of Nonnatus House never seemed to have an end.

Not hearing Delia's voice in reply, Patsy wandered towards the kitchen in search of her. It was a glorious late morning in early March, the sort of day that could only be spent strolling on the pier with an ice-cream, bumping elbows and nudging hips with her darling girl – and a false labour early that morning meant that her single patient for the day had elected to be packed off to the maternity home, with Shelagh's assurance that she would not be needed for at least 24 hours.

The efficient clicking of Patsy's shoes on the parquet floor softened and died on the kitchen lino. The room was empty, only a tea-cup lying upside-down on the draining board to testify that anybody had been there recently. Turning back towards the sitting-room, Patsy spotted Sister Monica Joan perched in an armchair, chuckling occasionally at something within the cloth-bound book in her hands. Patsy approached her, swinging her hips and propping her hands on her waist in an affectation of mock-annoyance.  
"Sister, I don't suppose you've seen Delia anywhere about? I…think it's her day off, and a glorious day like this surely calls for ice-cream on the pier."

She had narrowly avoided saying "I know it's her day off", revealing that she knew every minute of Delia's timetable at the London backwards and forwards. The two of them kept highly irregular hours, Patsy worst of all, since babies rarely had any regard for one's work hours. She and Delia therefore had precious little time together. The exceptions were meal-times with the nuns and the other girls, or moments here and there to share a longing glance, or let their hands brush on a door-handle as one was leaving and the other arriving in the half-grey of dawn; or, most rarely of all, a "night-cap" when their respective room-mates were absent, brief, golden minutes to steal breathless kisses, nerves humming and ears strained to hear approaching footsteps which would inevitably force them apart. It was a small thing, but Patsy knew the slightest irregularity in her speech could attract attention, provoke curiosity, and lead to questions whose answers were much more difficult to voice than any outright lie she could pluck from the store she had built up over the years.  
Sister Monica Joan lifted her head to look at Patsy, the skin on her face translucent with age and her blue eyes sparkling with life. She seemed not to see Patsy standing before her for a moment, but then a smile spread across her face, and she cried in delight,

"Youth! I do adore thee, O! My love, my love is young!"

Patsy hesitated, debating whether to ask again or leave to find Delia herself, when Sister Monica Joan continued,

"Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere: Nurse Busby is Welsh, and therefore of a choleric humour. She does not keep well indoors, for the dragon must fly, must she not? You, my dear,"

she fixed Patsy with a suddenly knowing eye,

"You are melancholic. Your hair serves to display an outward temper, and hides a heart which has been forged in tears. A heart of porcelain, as indeed your complexion is of porcelain…"

Patsy didn't have time to feel uncomfortable, as Monica Joan carried on,  
"I deem you a most suitable pair. Nurse Busby tends the flowerbed in the sun, at the invitation of Sister Julienne, who, I suspect, also understands the temper of that race."

Having imparted this information, Sister Monica Joan turned her attention back upon her book.  
Patsy inclined her head in thanks and left the sitting-room, smiling slightly as she went at what the ancient nun had said. Most of the other nuns and midwives quickly became exasperated and impatient with Monica Joan when she was in poetic spirits, but Patsy knew her overflowing prose concealed a shrewdness she had never known matched, if only one took the time to listen. She had always felt deep affection for the old woman, the first person she had encountered upon arrival in Nonnatus House. Her own paternal grandmother had died when she was a child, and her mother's mother, for whom she had been named, had not lived to see her come home to England. She would never know which, if either, of her granddaughters had survived the war.

The corridors of Nonnatus were quiet, and the silence lay thick and warm over the walls. Patsy had lived and studied in convents most of her life, but Nonnatus House was the first place where the silence wasn't oppressive—rather, it was serene, and inspired quietness in one's spirit. The windows cast great squares of sunlight onto the floor as she passed, and small motes of dust swirled lazily in the golden haze. The door to the garden was open, and its slanting outline was thrown in crisp relief onto the carefully waxed floor. Her heels clicking brightly and the hem of her green dress swinging against her calves, Patsy lightly ran her hand along the window-frames and turned her face towards the sunlight pouring through. She could feel her hair, loose about her shoulders, growing warm and soft, soaking up the light and glowing like dying embers. It had been a long winter, and she gladly drank in the light, like a daffodil craning its head towards the warmth of the sun.

As she headed towards the garden door, Patsy's ears finally picked up Delia's voice – higher-pitched than her own, but still more mellow and warm than those of the other nurses. Her accent, to Patsy's perpetually adoring ears, sounded always as though she was on the verge of laughter, like she delighted in every small thing you did or said. Her mouth turned involuntarily into that smirk she only kept for Delia and her heart lingered on a beat as though distracted. Patsy turned into the doorway and saw Delia's dark head, bent close to Sister Julienne's over the nun's flowerbeds. They were chatting animatedly about flowers – or rather, Delia was chatting and Sister Julienne was listening, smiling and adding her own commentary at appropriate points. Patsy hung back in the doorway, unwilling to intrude. She knew that Delia loved life in the city and everything it came with, but she also knew that she missed the vast green spaces of Pembrokeshire. Patsy couldn't count the number of stories she had heard about Delia's wild childhood in Wales, clambering up trees in her brother's old shorts and a jersey wrangled from a cousin, foot-races with boys from school, and one story, wheezily told between fits of giggling and snorting, of when she was running wild with her usual gang of boys on a scorching summer's day. The boys had decided to strip off for a swim in the river and Delia, not to be outdone, had hopped in with the best of them, clad in her knickers and vest for modesty. They had splashed about happily enough until her mother appeared, red of face and murder in her eyes, to drag her disgrace of a daughter home for the smacking of a lifetime and a dire lecture on what level of undress was unacceptable around boys if she wanted to preserve her soul…or worse.

"In retrospect, it was my soul that was in most jeopardy, but I feel it was probably the wrong time to bring that to her attention!"

And always there were the wistful reminiscences of her aunt's garden, of tiny Delia scattering seeds and upending watering-cans as big as herself, pulling carrots and cutting daffodils for St. David's day, spraying for rose-fly, picking gooseberries from the bushes her aunt Cerys couldn't reach, pushing her hands into the cool dark earth and feeling tiny stones and clods of soil under her fingers. To hear Delia talk, one could imagine the war hadn't happened—it certainly didn't seem to have touched that southern corner of Wales, and in her dark moments Patsy liked to imagine herself there with her, running through grass and shinning up trees, miles away from Singapore and the choking dust, away from rice and scars and hunger. Just her and her Delia. She could even hear herself speaking that patois of Welsh and English which Delia lapsed into in her sleep, or when too much whiskey had made her voluble.

Seeing Delia here, on her knees with Sister Julienne in the flowerbeds, both of them with sleeves pushed up to the elbows in a practiced motion, suddenly made a lump rise in Patsy's throat. She watched Sister Julienne work, watched the gentle way the caressed the flowers, the reverence with which she handled their stems and petals. She watched, too, the nun's strong forearms, her assured grip on the handle of her trowel, the careful way she turned aside the dark, peaty earth; and Patsy was struck by the thought that Sister Julienne was surely the busiest of them all – and yet she was the one who, most of all of them in Nonnatus, devoted herself completely to every task she set herself to. Never rushing, never hurrying – giving her whole heart and spirit to her midwifery, to her nursing, to the running of the household, to her sisters in Christ, and the nurses under her care. Patsy had not felt truly secure in any place she had lived or worked since she was a small child, until she came to take Jenny's place in Nonnatus House. The girl without a family had found a home and that, she now realised, was mainly due to Sister Julienne's seemingly bottomless reservoir of love.

Patsy was brought forcibly back to herself when she realised that she had been spotted. Sister Julienne's calm blue gaze met Patsy's, and she gestured her over to where she and Delia were now sitting back on their haunches, wiping sweat and sipping gratefully from the tall glasses of Sister Winifred's fresh lemonade they had on hand. Patsy pushed herself off the door frame and walked over to them, crossing her arms against the slight breeze under the grey cardigan draped across her shoulders. Delia caught her eye as she was lowering her glass, and she slowly licked her lips, smirking as Patsy glanced away immediately, ignoring the leap in her stomach and the shiver at the base of her spine. Instead, she turned a glowing smile on Sister Julienne, who was pushing herself to her feet and wiping her hands on the apron she had tied on over her scapular. Patsy avoided wondering how long she had spent gazing at Delia, and how much of it Sister Julienne had seen.

"Ah, Nurse Mount. Exactly the woman we had hoped to see."

Patsy risked a glance at Delia, who behaved herself this time, and noticed that a dusting of freckles had appeared across her nose and cheeks, along with a smear of earth across her left temple, hiding a thin scar Patsy knew to be there, just hidden under her fringe. Struck afresh by a swell of love for this beautiful young woman, she turned back to Sister Julienne.

"Indeed, sister? Always glad to be where I'm needed."

She flashed her most charming smile.  
Sister Julienne smiled back at her, folding her earth-stained fingers in front of her.

"Excellent. I wonder, Nurse Mount, would you be so good as to finish helping Nurse Busby re-plant these crocuses. They have survived the winter, and now it is time to let them blossom."

Patsy caught Delia's eye again and had to turn away from the softness she saw there. Sister Julienne's ability to say much with few words was something that often struck a chord in her. The nun continued,

"I am afraid I let the morning get away from me, and I must attend to some correspondence if I am to be finished in time for Compline tonight. I do hope you don't mind, I am aware that you had an unexpected day off…"

She looked expectantly at Patsy, who suddenly could think of no better way to pass the afternoon.  
"Of course Sister, I'd be delighted. Though I must warn you, the last time I handled flowers was removing a wayward vase from a bedside locker in the London."

That wasn't true, but Patsy didn't want to think of the last time she had handled a bouquet of flowers, in a ghastly jug on the windowsill of a spotless flat.

"Wonderful, thank you ever so much. I'll have Fred bring you out some lemonade."

Sister Julienne handed Patsy her trowel and offered her her apron, which Patsy gratefully took and hung around her neck. Sister Julienne knew she would find it on a chair-back in the kitchen that evening, freshly washed and immaculately ironed. Turning to Delia, she said,  
"I'm terribly sorry to abandon you in the midst of our labours, Nurse Busby. I do hope you can forgive me."  
"Not at all, Sister. I think I'm in good hands here."  
Only Patsy knew that the cherubic grin Delia bestowed on Sister Julienne had an edge of devilment to it. Slipping off her shoes and placing them neatly next to Delia's, she knelt and wove the fingers of her right hand with Delia's as Sister Julienne moved gracefully away.  
"Hullo you. What are we doing then?"

Sister Julienne turned in the doorway to look back at the two nurses. She smiled at their heads bent close together, the soft sunlight glowing in the gold and copper of Patsy's hair, gleaming on Delia's warm chestnut and unexpected Celtic red, suddenly shining when she moved her head in laughter. The house was still enveloped in deep silence, and the dust motes still danced in the lazy air. Sister Julienne went towards the kitchen, thinking as she went that everything has its time, and its place. She let the water run for a moment to warm up, and as she did she heard a peal of laughter ring through the corridor that she had never heard before. She had heard Nurse Mount laughing before now, of course; giggling with the other young nurses at something probably best kept from her knowledge, shaking, helpless with laughter at something Fred did or said, or even laughing with sheer joy and wonder at one of her deliveries. But this laugh was different - it was large, and warm, and all-encompassing. It was the laugh of someone who is full of love.

Shaking the last of the water off her hands, Sister Julienne passed under the portrait of St. Raymond Nonnatus, and paused. Her fingers, still fragrant with the dark scent of earth, found the cross at her neck. She ran over its smoothed edges, and looked up at the saint's serene face. She felt her lips moving, mouthing the prayer she so often found herself repeating;  
"…and all manner of thing shall be well."


End file.
